December 27, 2014

If your computer keyboard looks a bit plain why not kick it up a notch? NeIdan built this Airship Captain MK-I – Steampunk Keyboard that was built around an every day keyboard and by spending a bit of time and a few extra pieces you get an amazing data entry device.

“Tools used:

scissors and x-acto knives also used heavy duty cutter for cutting the plastic keys

screwdrivers

Materials:

a keyboard

glue(any kind will do, i used r21 and wood glue)

nail polish or any kind of polish will do(wood polish)

brass buttons – i used two sizes for emphasizing some keys like the ctrl and shift etc..

vintage ish looking paper(looks a bit like a scroll paper)

guitar strap pins

fabric of your choice

friction lid support – which is basicly a window hardware, but you can also use other hardware parts or make something similar your own, which is what i would have done if i would redo this.”

December 13, 2014

These Internet Controlled Robots are not available to play with all the time but if you keep an eye on the Twitter channel you will have a chance to have a look and give them a try when they are online next.

“I only put together one robot kit previously, then these two robots both started as Activity Bots.
I hooked up a Raspberry Pi with an HD camera, went through a few wifi options, and got the robot to stream video to twitch.tv and take commands from users via their chat. Later i added the Aruduino for using neopixels and some other future features. We’ve also been making dungeons around the house, made out of cardboard, making quests, and other things for people to do and explore.”

November 22, 2014

What to do after you get your hands on a discarded scanning electron microscope. Ben Krasnow from Applied Science took the signal directly out of the device and fed it into a DSO. He was then able to capture it at a much higher resolution than is displayed on the original CRT that came with the unit. The results are incredible.

November 6, 2014

If you think the price of 3D printers is hitting the floor check out what Mikelllc built for $60. About 80% of this EWaste 3DPrinter is recycled computer parts which is abundant and readily available.

“First of all, we learn how a generic CNC system works (by assembling and calibrating bearings, guides and threads) and then teach the machine to respond to g-code instructions. After that, we add a small plastic extruder and give an overview on plastic extrusion calibration, driver power tuning and other few operations that will bring the printer to life. Following this instructions you will get a small footprint 3D Printer that is built with about an 80% of recycled components, which gives it a great potential and helps to reduce the cost significantly.”

November 1, 2014

If you need some computing power on the go you might want to look into adding a car computer. Sentdex shows us how he does it on the cheap, the top of the great find is the $17 monitor. It has a Raspberry Pi as the heart, an ODB interface and a camera to loop record. An interesting power management system allows the system to detect when car power has been switched off and gracefully shut down the system.

“Navy researchers installed the system on regular 7-foot and 11-foot boats and put them through a series of exercises designed to test behaviors such as escort and swarming attack. The boats escorted a manned Navy ship before breaking off to encircle a vessel acting as a possible intruder. The five autonomous boats then formed a protective line between the intruder and the ship they were protecting.”

September 18, 2014

David Watts got his hands on a Commodore Pet computer. I have never seen under the hood before, and it is quite funny that the case actually opens like a hood on a car including the prop stick to keep it open. David will be attempting to restore the PET so that it works properly again, it looks like the keyboard didn’t stand the test of time very well, there are now more keys not working than working. I am curious what will be needed to bring it back to a fully functional state. I am thinking the caps are long dried out and not doing much smoothing anymore.